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Tuesday, 21 February 2012

'Palming It Off On The Unions'

The Dame understood Cllr Campion to be a rational and reasonable councillor. So she suffered a jolt to hear from a senior officer that he had joined Cockell's Jester, Cllr Palmer, to set up a two man team. The two man team has been set up-not to examine members' telephone charges- an area Cllr Palmer has expertise in (please explain Dame, Ed....No, Ed it could get me into trouble Dame)- but to endanger good Town Hall management/union relations. These odd bedfellows have been authorised, (one assumes by Pooter,) but if not the Dame apologises in advance, to find out whether the work union representatives do “value for money”. The team’s first meeting will be devoted to a slide show of the photos “clandestinely” taken by Clouseau (see the Dame’s evidence) of the recent Day of Action. Cllr. Palmer dismissed the offer that he would be better served by the official photographs that the union themselves took. Here is that grossly embarrassing picture of Palmer snapping union members on their Day of Action. Yes, it proves a picture is worth a thousand words!

A Giggling Buffoon

Our Council buffoon now dedicates his time to proving that paid time off for three union representatives and a small basement broom cupboard of an office is costing Council Tax payers dear. At a time when the union representatives are extremely busy negotiating the tri-borough staffing changes, new ways of working and assisting their members with relocation and redundancy, Clouseau conveniently forgets that rights of representation at such times is a statutory one. Without the union reps the Council would have to employ at least four more highly paid human resources professionals to deal with all this work. The unions also provide two extra telephone lines, one of which is totally dedicated to receiving idiotic enquiries from Palmer and his councillor colleagues. In addition, the unions subsidise the Council through a range of other facilities. No doubt all will be revealed to Inspector Clouseau once he has finished his slide show.

But how much does our very own Inspector Clouseau cost the Council? The basic allowance per councillor per annum is almost £11,000. In addition to this Clouseau gets his own computer, printer, photocopier and office space within the Members’ Room. Most of the time he has all these facilities to himself, given his colleagues’ reluctance to share the room with him. He is then able to use these facilities to support the work of Councilskills.com, whose annual accounts are now eagerly awaited. He can also( should he wish) check his share portfolio, make telephone calls, get all his photocopying done for free and so on and so on.

So does Clouseau provide value for money for the Council? This question has to be answered by officers and councillor colleagues. They are the ones forced to go on his councilskills.com courses. As they admit, ' we have much better and more important things to do with our time' And senior officers fear this is the wrong time to harass union officials-that sounds logical!

If the majority of Conservative backbenchers were opposed to this idea, it would have been helpful if some of them had spoken up. The only members to speak in opposition to establishing the Sub-Committee were the Labour Councillors. Cllr Buckmaster spoke out in favour of the idea in Committee, so he must shoulder some of the blame for letting Cllr Palmer have his fun at the expense of good relations with the Borough's unions.

Ahern was there too. And he and Feilding-Mellen got a roasting from Palmer about their credit union. Having been shamed by the Chelsea Care fiasco, Palmer and his friends want to stop the credit union at all costs - then they can get kudos for stopping something that will only benefit the urban poor.

The Dame says that there is little love lost between Rock Feilding Mellen and the Buffoon. Buffoon is deadly jealous of the suave and socially adept Rock FM and his rapidly burgeoning relationship with Pooter. Rock despises Buffoon for screwing up his election and bringing the Rotten Borough into even greater disrepute.Rock is beginning to flex his muscles as demonstrated over the Tesco vote.

If pooter has so little to give to palmer to do, then maybe he should allocate him and all those involved in Exhibitiion Road some on their knees scrubbing of the dirty road. It would save residents having to pay for it.... It is after all time for penance?

I sincerely hope that my union representatives decline to get involved with the work of this so-called scrutiny group. I am told that, after a slight wobble at the committee, the Labour group have decided not to be involved. My representatives should remember that Palmer has form on scrutiny. He produced such a dreadful report on childhood obesity that the Tories had to hurriedly drop it with some embarassment and his Chelsea Care report was so weak that even his own Leader would not allow it to be reported to full Council. His latest so-called scrutiny group has no proper terms of reference and my sympathy goes out to all the officers who will now have to waste valuable time working with him on this nonsense.

Allowing Cllr Palmer to have this Sub-Committee is like appointing the playground bully to the post of prefect. He has already shown his bullying tactics by taking pictures at a picket line by Council staff. Now he has been given permission to rifle through the unions' business, and the modest support that they are given by the Council (support which saves money on human resources expenditure, and to which the unions are legally entitled). Cllr Palmer no doubt is looking to cause as much trouble for the unions as he can. There is great potential that he will upset the good relationship of the Council with its workforce, just as redundancies loom as a result of the Tri-Borough project. If anyone is the wrong person for this job, it's Palmer.

Why did none of the Tory Councillors try to quash this nonsense, and why did Cllr Buckmaster support it?

I hope the rumour I heard - that Cllr. Palmer is asking for the names of all officers whose union subscription is paid by deduction from salary - is not correct. Obviously he won't be allowed to have them, but his asking for them wouldn't surprise me, given his stupid camera activities on the day of action. I pay mine privately, as do many other officers. I am not an activist and I don't go on strike but union membership is a good insurance policy to have, especially in today's climate.

Apparently this is part of Cllr. Palmer's bid to become chairman of the Cabinet Scrutiny Committee when Cllr. Blakeman stands down from the post in May. The vice chairman can't take over because he is going to be Mayor.

Palmer as Head of Scrutiny might not be a bad idea. He is a useless councilor and the Committee is a useless talking shop. Lock them in a room and let them fulminate.

If there was a 2012 Committee of Backbench Conservative councilors, then we might see some pressure to take scrutiny seriously and staff the committee accordingly.

An outstanding member of the committee has been Cllr Todd Foreman. Incisive, focused and brain in his head. Now he would be a good Chairman of a meaningful committee - but insecure Cockell would never allow that.

Hot Desk is correct. This is a very dangerous diversion. Cllr Palmer’s objective when he chaired the scrutiny into childhood obesity was to “prove” that children in state schools are fat and lazy and children in private schools are trim and fit – and this is what his report duly said. Privately he has said that this new scrutiny report will recommend that the unions pay rent for their tiny office and receive no more than the legal minimum paid time off for union duties. Ideally the report will be quashed by the scrutiny committee and then quietly buried, but who can say, now that he has the support of Cllr Buckmaster? The most likely outcome then is that the unions will withdraw their active support in the tri-borough negotiations and the whole project will flounder as a consequence. Cllrs Barrow and Greenhalgh have already seen the warning signs and are ducking out. Cllr Cockell seems to have taken his eye off this particular ball, but this isn’t surprising, given all his other responsibilities.

The issue is surely an attempt by RBKC to deprive officers of their already fairly modest union rights. For the Council to photograph activists on their day of action smacks of totalitarianism.

Similarities are creeping in between RBKC and certain discredited Middle Eastern regimes. Some of these have already been swept away. RBKC is well advised to take note. The public has had enough.

It is disturbing that most of the many comments on this subject are internal Conservative bickering, rather than addressing the threat to everyone's freedom inherent in RBKC's attitude towards its officers.

10.31, I think you may be right. The horrid Harry Phibbs from Hammersmith is a sort of role model to Palmer, and Phibbs has been spouting off against local authority trade unions on his blog. Palmer probably got the idea to look into local authority expenditure on trade unions from Phibbs (it's doubtful that Palmer could have come up with the idea on his own). The question is, has Pooter Cockell sanctioned Palmer's poking into the trade unions? It has potential to upset the tri-borough apple cart, so Cockell needs to be careful.

The danger is not the conclusion or the actions but the unpleasantness of any process that he undertakes. Very stupid to let him do it, but then there are a lot of very stupid people on the Council. We need to get rid of Cockell and raise the standards. While he is there it will continue to to scrape along on the botton of the pond.

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